


Lost in Middle America

by Sleepygoof8784



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M, Political Campaigns, Slow Build, West Wing AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:59:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepygoof8784/pseuds/Sleepygoof8784
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach and Chris get left behind at a Campaign Rally in Indiana. Hijinks ensue as they try and get home. AKA the time that I wrote a West Wing AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in Middle America

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** So totally not mine. Also not mine? The West Wing, it's characters and any dialogue I may have quoted from the episode 20 Hours in America in Season 4.  
>  As the disclaimer suggests this is somewhat of a West Wing AU. familiarity with the West Wing is not necessary to understand the prompt. All you need to know is that JJ is the President, the cast all works for him, and he is running for re-election. The story is based loosely (very very loosely) on the episode 20 Hours in America. Also it assumes that Indiana is still a state that does not include day light savings time. We do now, but I choose to ignore that. And finally to any Hoosiers I may have offended I apologize, though being a Midwesterner myself I play upon certain Midwestern Indiana stereotypes in the fic. 
> 
> Origionally written for the 2011 Trek RPF Exchange on LJ.
> 
> Also a big big thanks to [](http://izzyfics.livejournal.com/profile)[**izzyfics**](http://izzyfics.livejournal.com/) for all her beta work. She looked at this at least three times, helped me with the sex stuff a bit and was just an all around great cheerleader. She's the best beta ever. :D

Chris sighs to himself as he hears his assistant prattling away to Mary Sue Midwestern about her life on the farm.  Okay so that’s not fair. She really is a nice girl who has done a lot for them on this particular campaign stop, including getting her father to let them hold the event on his farm.  But if Chris has to listen to one more word about her boyfriend's truck that has been modified to run on some new farm-based alternative fuel, he might rip his hair out. He hates these freaking Midwestern campaign stops.

He turns around and focuses on something else.  And smiles when he sees Zach pacing a few feet away, listening intently to the stump speech, which yeah he wrote it and all, but it's the same damn speech the President's been giving at every stop in the Midwest. Chris ambles over to Zach, feeling the need to tease him a little, but mostly wanting to have a conversation with the man. It’s been nearly four years of working together and they are friends, but there has always been something else there, something right under the surface, that draws them to one another time and again.

Chris approaches Zach and a thought pops into his head that he instantly blurts out, “What are you doing back here? Usually you like to watch from the front row.”

Zach sniffs and sighs, kicking dirt with the toe of his shoe.  “Karl said that the President wanted me to know he is having a high blood pressure day.”

Chris frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Mrs. Abrams, I mean Dr. Abrams, I mean, the first lady is trying to keep his blood pressure down, and apparently I’m a stressor for him. So on high-blood pressure days I’m not allowed in his line of sight.”

Chris can’t help it, he laughs a loud full-throated laugh.

A handful of grass flies at Chris, “Shut up, man.”

Chris sighs and chuckles again, “I know you make my blood pressure rise.”

“Seriously, man shut up.”

Chris notices Anton slipping down from the platform, Karl is just behind him, and he can hear the clapping.

As soon as Zach notices Anton he asks, “How was it? The section on the budget?”

A chuckle escapes Anton before he speaks, “Seriously Zach you have to settle down. You’re going to kill the President or yourself with a heart attack.”

Zach growls and turned to stalk away. Chris groans and follows him because all good-natured teasing aside, Zach is good at his job, knows his stuff and is such an utter pain in the ass because he cares so damn much.  
  
“Don’t go far, it’s almost done and you don’t want to be like the guys who got left by the motorcade last month in Kentucky and were never heard from again.” Rachel calls after him.  
  
Chris nods, not wanting to meet the same fate, and yet not willing to let Zach wallow in frustration either.  Chris catches up to Zach pretty quickly, he’s not gone far, just closer to the rows and rows of corn.  
  
“Zach man, you okay?”

“No Chris I’m not, excuse me for caring about my job, about the President. I want him to be the best President he can be, the best candidate. I seem to be the only one realizing that appealing to the lowest common denominator like the other guy isn’t the best campaign strategy.”

Chris sighs, they’ve been over this, ad nausea for what seems like years now but has really been months.  “No one here is doing that.”

Zach throws up his hands in frustration and shouts, “You’re all doing it! I’m the only one not drinking the kool-aid and I’m sick of it.”

Chris shakes his head. And he knows he needs to focus, but he’s distracted by Zach again. The man is too gorgeous for his own good. Even when he is angry, he cuts a striking figure. Long lithe limbs, chiseled jaw line, soft sloping facial structure, and expressive eyes. It takes nearly all Chris has not to jump him when he’s like this. But the fact that no one knows he is even looking reins him in.

Noticing the applause has all but tapered off, Chris motions for them to start walking back towards the cars as he says, “Zach man, you have to calm down. We’re all on your side. We all want what you want.”

“You’re not getting it!”

Chris sighs in frustration, “Now this is going to be a high stress day for me too, isn’t it?”

Zach frowns and is ready to shout at Chris, when he notices something isn’t quite right. “Wait, something's wrong.”

“Yeah, you're being a pain in the ass,” Chris mutters under his breath.

“I heard that. And no I mean, isn’t this is where the motorcade should be?”  

The panic starts to well in Chris’ stomach. He notices one of the rally goers, and asks her, “Do you know where the motorcade is?”

The look on her face suggests that he is especially slow. She points towards the dirt road in which the long black motorcade is merrily traveling away from the farm. And to Chris’ utter horror and says, “It's out there.”

“NO!” Chris starts jumping up and down, waving his arms in the small hope that they will see him.

Zach sighs, and thinks that this is fitting with the rest of his day.

Mary Sue Midwestern, and yeah, Chris really needs to try and remember her actual name, sees them in distress and comes over to chat.

Zach calls her by name, and how the hell does he know her name, and somehow gets her to offer to have her boyfriend drive them to the next campaign stop halfway across the state.

“This is great, gives me a chance to show you the soy diesel car. We can talk more about farm subsidies.”

And Chris thinks maybe Mary Sue, okay her name is Laura, has a future in politics because they are about to be stuck in the car for two hours hearing about farm subsidies. It’s every lobbyists’ dream and his utter nightmare.

But Zach, Zach keeps engaging her, interested in everything she has to say, like he’s planning the next state of the union around farm subsidies, which Chris knows are all but dead in Congress and are going to cost way too much to renew and are going to be wildly unpopular. So yeah, he hates farm subsidies because they are going to make his life hell as soon as it's budget time.

A fact Chris is just about to point out, because he’s kind of a dick at times and he knows it, when the truck sputters to a stop.

“Let me guess. We’re out of corn juice.”

Zach gives him a dirty look the kind that suggests he will be going to hell for saying corn juice, but hell if he knows what this thing runs on. He hasn’t been paying attention because he doesn't give a damn, okay?

Laura’s boyfriend just shrugs, “We’re out of diesel.”

“It’s okay--there is a gas station up the road about a mile.”

And Chris feels a little hope as Laura says that because a mile isn’t that far to walk. But that hope is dashed.

“They don’t have diesel.”

Chris runs his fingers aggressively through his hair attempting to stave off the outburst that is barely being contained. But Zach makes a suggestion, and in Chris’ opinion, it is miraculously non-moronic.  
  
“Chris and I will walk to the gas station and I’ll call the local campaign office, see if they can send a car to get us and take us straight to the air force base to meet the motorcade at the plane.  We can call someone to bring you two diesel if you’d like.”

The boyfriend just scoffs, “We’ll hitchhike a ride back to the farm, and get fuel and come back.”

“Hitchhike out here?”

And no sooner than Chris speaks, does an old farmer come down the road and stop to ask the two locals if they need a ride.  As he and Zach start walking, Chris thinks this might be what hell is like.  
  
  
They make it to the gas station and are hot and dusty when they arrive. The gas station looks more like a gas shack and Chris can’t help but wonder what sort of backwoods place they are in. Because it looks like they could film a Midwestern sequel to Deliverance in this place.  
  
Zach manages to get a signal on his cell phone and they have to wait another fifteen minutes for the local campaign volunteer to arrive. There is no luck getting ahold of anyone with the campaign. Karl, Rachel, Anton, Simon, Zoe all of them are not answering their phones, and Chris is starting to feel that knot of dread in his stomach grow.  
  
Chris leaves Zach standing outside, going in to get two bottles of water from the sparse convenience section of the dilapidated little gas station. He offers the old man at the register with a prominent wad of chew in his lip a smile and says, “Hi. My friend and I work for the President.”  
  
The old man spits into a mason jar next to the cash register and drawls out, “Didn’t vote for him last time, not gonna vote for him this time.”

“Right. Well, we were at the campaign stop but got left by the motorcade, and our ride ran out of diesel. We’re just going to be waiting for someone from the local campaign office to come get us.”  
  
The old man eyes Chris speculatively, “Don’t like loitering, neither.”  
  
“Okay, we’ll wait outside.” Chris grabs the two water bottles and heads back outside.  
  
“Here you go man.”  
  
Zach thanks Chris for the water and downs half the bottle in one gulp. Chris finds himself needing to look away, because even drenched in sweat and scowling, Zach is mesmerizing as his throat muscles work to swallow the steady stream of water Zach is guzzling down.  
  
Zach wipes his mouth on his shirt sleeve and asks, “What?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Okay.”   
  
Zach doesn't sounds convince, but the local campaign volunteer arrives with a red jeep, and they are saved. Except that the volunteer is like twelve (okay seventeen and old enough to drive) and won’t shut up about some girl. And Chris is starting to think again that this is what hell is like.  
  
Chris becomes convinced he’s in hell when Gary the seventeen year-old volunteer announces he has to stop for a second because there is a group of three girls walking with a bicycle, and really what the fuck?  
  
Zach looks rather fascinated as the alpha female tells poor Gary that he’s creepy because he isn’t taking their break-up lying down. Chris doesn't find it fascinating, mostly he just finds it incredibly irritating, because hello they have a plane to catch in 30 minutes.  

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt. But Gary, we really need to get moving again. Wheels are up on Air Force One at three and we need to be on that plane.”  
  
The alpha female, Trixie or something, Chris really doesn’t care what her name is, addresses him with a snotty voice, “Are you guys retarded or something? It’s three-thirty.”  
  
Finally Zach gets involved and mentions, “No. It’s two-thirty.”  
  
And Gary slaps his forehead just before he starts speaking, “We crossed over the county line from Unionville to Connersville. We crossed the timeline.”  
  
“Duh.” Trixie supplies rather unhelpfully.  
  
Chris just dumbly asks, “The timeline?”  
  
“Right, it’s Indiana dude, only the northern counties observe daylight savings time.”  
  
Zach is about to snap, and really Chris isn’t much better, but he can see the warning signs in Zach. Almost could count down, T minus five, four, three, two,  
  
“Of course! That makes perfect sense. Right!”  
  
And there it is the start of the slow meltdown. Zach is shouting and pacing and looking like he needs a pen and paper so that he can write twenty pages on his utter frustration at the international date line and how standardizing time has ruined the lives of hard working Americans.  
  
Chris takes a more direct meltdown approach and screams out, “I’m in Hell. Complete HELL!”  
  
Gary just looks at them like they are crazy, and gives them a minute to walk it off while he talks to his ex-girlfriend.   
  
  
Two hours and forty-five minutes later, Chris and Zach seek shelter from the pouring rain at an all night diner within walking distance of the Indianapolis International Airport. Gary had taken them to Lafayette, then they'd caught the Amtrak to Indianapolis. Only Gary’s an idiot and put them on the train towards Chicago, so they had to go back, and finally made it to Indianapolis. Of course God hate Chris, as indicated by the pouring rain, thus all flights are grounded. The airline was going to call when they are ready to fly again and until then, Zach suggested they get some dinner. The unhelpful jerk.  
  
And yeah, Chris realizes he’s being harsh. But Zach is the other reason he’s in utter hell so he is entitled to be a little harsh, thank you. Zach has been nothing but gorgeous and kind and other than the one moment of frustration at Gary, utterly calm.  And Chris can’t stop watching him, every little move, every tiny eye movement; Chris is tracking because there is something inherently beautiful about Zach that Chris just can’t put his finger on.  
  
And yet he’s drawn to Zach like a moth to a flame. And he knows he’ll end up burnt, but he just can’t stay away, can’t stop watching, can’t stop wanting to touch, to pleasure, to enjoy, to own. But Chris can’t do any of those things as there are practical considerations, like his job (he’s technically Zach’s boss), his reputation (no one suspects hard-hitting no-nonsense political hitter Chris Pine is bisexual) and their friendship (he’s not sure he can risk that). Plus you know, Zach has never made one indication that he would even be interested in Chris. Chris can’t take this anymore he needs some space.   
  
“I’m going hit the restroom.” And he is out of the booth before Zach can respond.  
  
Chris is in the men’s room splashing cold water on his face, trying to shock his senses into letting go of the catalogue of pictures of Zach it’s been storing all day. Chris dries his face in the paper towels and lifts his face and is utterly shocked to see Zach’s reflection over his shoulder in the mirror.  
  
He hadn’t heard the door open, and he was sure he’d locked the door to the single person bathroom anyway, but apparently not, because Zach is there, and now is standing just inches from Chris, his gaze locked on Chris’ in the mirror, holding him there like something in a tractor beam.   
  
“Zach?”    
  
“Have you been watching me all day?”  
  
Chris heart lodges in his throat and his eyes snap shut, embarrassment at being caught burning across his cheeks.

And then he feels the heat of Zach’s body standing so close to his back, and feather soft lips on his neck. “It’s just me Chris, how long have we known each other? Open your eyes and answer me, honestly.”

“Yes. I’ve been watching you all day.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Why do you think?”  
  
“Christopher.”  
  
“Because you are freaking gorgeous, okay? And distracting, no matter what, no matter how crazy you make me with your paranoid ramblings or how difficult you're being, or how much I want to kill you sometimes, you’re still you. Gorgeous, funny, and sweet under the aloof exterior. And I can’t keep from wanting you.”  
  
Zach kisses his neck again again, “You don’t like men.”  
  
Chris’ eyes flash angrily, because if he had a dollar for everyone who has tried to convince him of that he’d be a rich man.  “You don’t know I like men, that’s not the same thing Zach.”  
  
And Zach must be done talking, because he grabs Chris by the hip to spin him around and presses him against the bathroom counter and then is kissing him for all he’s worth.  
  
It’s fierce and primal, each one trying to force the other’s tongue into submission, trying to worm their way into the others' mouth. It’s a clash of teeth and hard-thrusting tongues, and it draws moans from Chris, and grunts from Zach, and it’s possibly the hottest kiss of Chris’ life.  
  
And before he can process it, think about it, talk himself out of it, Chris is attacking Zach’s shirt, pulling the buttons open, and nibbling his way down Zach’s chest. Which earns him another animalistic growl.  
  
Chris checks to see if Zach locked the door because he’s not so far gone yet that he wants this on the front page of the New York Times. Satisfied that it’s secure, he nips back up Zach’s chest, and battles Zach’s mouth once again for dominance.  
  
When Zach pulls away from Chris to take in oxygen, Chis kisses his cheek and scrabbles at Zach’s pants thrusting his hands into Zach’s boxers, wrapping a hand around his shaft, and giving him a tight stroke, as he impishly asks, “This okay?”  

Zach manages a strangles gasp and nods.

Chris loves this, seeing Zach speechless, his eyes blown wide in lust. He teasingly asks, “You sure?”

Zach growls and bites Chris’ shoulder hard.

Chris moans, and tightens his hand around Zach, stroking harder and faster.

Zach looks lost, as if he can't form a rational thought.  And the utter nonsense that is flowing from his mouth, low and gravely and dirty, full of promises and teasing and need would make Chris blush or mock Zach later, if it weren't so damn hot that it takes root in Chris’ brain and inspires encouragement that his just dirty and sultry. It’s a shame Chris is so lost in the pleasure of Zach’s hot cock slick with his own saliva sliding in and out of his fist that he will never remember what either of them actually said in this moment.

And Zach's voice has dropped an octave when he starts to stutter and plead, throwing in encouragements under his breath. Chris knows he can't last much longer. Can tell by the way the cock in his hand pulses. So he tightens his hands and adds an extra twist on his last stroke and then Zach is coming undone. And it's enough to make Chris forget the counter digging into his back, or the shady location, or the whole day. His world narrows to the hot sticky wetness that is being spent into his hand and the look of utter pleasure and relief on Zach's face.

Chris can’t help it--he moans too and draws his hand out of Zach’s pants and brings it to his mouth and licks it clean.

Zach moans at the picture Chris makes, leaning back against the counter licking Zach’s come off his fingers. Chris knows he looks tragically slutty but he can't help himself, will just die if he lets this opportunity to taste Zach pass with out seizing it. So he licks his hand clean and Zach can just deal with it.

Chris isn’t sure what is happening, but he’s thrust up against the counter again and Zach’s on his knees. And that is pretty much the last thought Chris has, because Zach has worked his pants open and down his legs and is blowing a steady stream of cool air onto Chris’ cock and he needs that brain power to remember how to breathe.

“Fuck, Zach.”

Zach chuckles and then sucks the tip into his mouth, licking into it to no-doubt taste the precome waiting there, drawing another moan from Chris.

And Chris feels himself slipping away, down into the place where thought ends and all he can do is just feel. Feel Zach's lips around him, the heat of his mouth, the slide of his tongue. And when Zach opens his mouth wider making little noises and his movements silently urging Chris to thrust into him, well Chris is just lost. Lost to that bottomless abyss of pleasure and desire and more, need, want, and never stop.

And its all he can take, he’s coming with a flood of gasps and moans and curses, Zach’s name on his lips like a prayer.  A dirty, dirty prayer.

And somehow, neither of them is sure how, Chris ends up on the floor with Zach. And if either of them were capable of conscious thought, they would realize how disgusting that is. But at the moment, all they can do is huddle together and try and catch their breath.  
  
And if , if, (because Chris will deny it until the day he dies) Chris mutters, “I’m in heaven,” then it was only because he was exhausted and still high on the endorphins, and it was by no means a comment on Zach’s sexual prowess.  
  
They make it back to DC finally, both dirty, exhausted, and a hell of a lot more friendly with each other than they were before about three hours earlier.  They head into the office; recount (most) of their experiences and life goes on. No one questions anything; no one is any more the wiser. And if Zach and Chris occasionally leave and arrive at the same time, well it’s just a coincidence. As is their unexplained mutual love of Indiana.


End file.
